


Cold Front

by low_battery_laptop



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fictober 2019, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 19:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20953463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/low_battery_laptop/pseuds/low_battery_laptop
Summary: Byleth comes into her emotions, sometimes slowly, sometimes all too fast.Day Eight of Fictober with the prompt 'Can you stay?'





	Cold Front

“Can you stay?” Dimitri felt a spike of anxiety when he realized the professor was talking to him. “I’d like to speak with you for a bit.” Immediately his mind ran to his performance in class; was he not doing well enough? Did the professor have a problem with him? He wasn’t about to tell her no, but he worried, and the look Sylvain was giving him wasn’t helping at all. As the other students walked from the classroom, the professor stood from her desk and walked around to the other side of it. She had the same vacant look on her face as she always did. 

It was rather unnerving to Dimitri. Everyone he’d ever met always gave away their emotions somehow, by expression or body language, but she did neither. She looked almost like a doll. 

“Is there something I can do for you, professor?” 

“I was hoping you would join me for tea before dinner,” she said. “It may have been presumptuous of me, but I happened to run into Dedue before I did my shopping, and asked what sort of tea you preferred. It’s chamomile, yes?”

Dimitri’s heart jumped up in his throat for a whole new reason. He had expected to be scolded for something he had done in class, not invited to tea. “I- Of course, professor. I would love to,” Dimiti managed to say, after spending a few seconds in silence. 

“Very well.” The professor turned to her desk, and collected a few papers, along with a large textbook. With her arms full, she turned back to Dimitri. “Shall we?”

He nodded, and followed his professor out to the garden. Once again the professor surprised him- the tea set, as well as a plate of various cakes had already been set at one of the tables. Had someone put her up to this?

As if she had read his thoughts, the professor gave him an answer. “My father-- Captain Jeralt, said it may be good for me to spend time with each of my students outside of scheduled class time, so he helped me to arrange this,” she told him. Dimitri pulled back a chair as she set her things down at the small table, and she thanked him. “But in truth, I’ve invited you here to ask for your help.”

Pulling back his own chair, Dimitri watched the professor pour hot tea into the cup in front of him, and then her own. The scent of chamomile calmed him. How long had it been since he’d sat down and drank tea like this, he wondered. Opposite to him, the professor raised her cup to her lips, slowly sipping the hot tea. It occurred to him that she no longer moved with the same calculated stiffness that she typically did. In a strange way, she seemed a bit more relaxed. 

“I fear I frighten you all.” 

Dimitri had just begun to drink his own cup of tea, and nearly choked on it after she spoke. He quickly set his cup down, and coughed into the cloth napkin that sat next to the saucer. “I-- I beg your pardon, professor. You-- The topic of conversation caught me off guard, I must admit.”

She shook her head. “It’s quite alright. I am aware of my own… bluntness. I would like to be more approachable, but I do not know how.”

He didn’t know how to approach her question. Dimitri only knew that before the professor came to the monastery, she had been a formidable warrior. He could only guess that a lifetime dedicated to bloodshed made he cold. But that didn’t seem right. Her father, and dozens of other knights that he had seen, all bled their own personality even after years spent on battlefields. 

“I asked you for guidance because you seem to be a very honest man, and honesty is what I need now. And I can assure you, any comments you make will not reflect our relationship as teacher and student.” She took another sip of tea, and looked to him expectantly. 

“Well…” he began. Being honest, perhaps brutally so, was harder than it seemed. “I don’t think I have ever seen you smile.” She tilted her head to one side. “You look as though you feel nothing at all. And I admit, I too find it… unnerving.”

The professor looked down into her tea cup, thinking over his answer. Then, she looked up to him, and her lips turned upward into an awkward looking smile. “Like this?” Dimitri wasn’t sure if he was excited to see something other than her blank expression, or unsettled by how fake her smile seemed. 

“Ah-- Yes, but… It may help if you smile when you actually feel happy, professor. Perhaps, try to think of a memory, or something else that brings you joy, when you smile.”

Her face returned to its normal state, and once more she looked down into the tea cup. Even without an expression on her face, Dimitri could somehow tell she was thinking hard, digging into her memory as he suggested. Moments passed, and he began to wonder if the professor had  _ any _ happy memories.

But then, something in her eyes changed, and the smile returned. This time it was warmer, and when she looked back to Dimitri, his heart raced in his chest. He could hardly admit it to himself, but he found her to be beautiful. 

“Is this better?” she asked him. Dimitri nodded, and her smile brightened even more. 

It would not be the last time the professor asked him to have tea with her. Each time he sat with her in the garden, more and more of her growing personality shone through. 

* * *

Everyone mourned for the death of Jeralt, but time could not stand still and let the living grieve for the dead. Now more than ever, the professor seemed determined to prepare her students for whatever they were to face. Each day she trained them harder than the last, pushing them to their limits with their minds and their bodies. 

Dimitri sparred with her one morning, and only then did he understand the depth of the pain she had hidden away. She wielded a wooden lance against him, and threw her pain into the way she moved. For once in his life, Dimitri was the one to knock her off her feet. He had the upper hand, but it was not because of his own growing skills. 

Their sparring session ended when the wood of her lance spintered, and snapped, after her put all of her strength behind a single blow that missed Dimitri by an inch. She stopped, breathing hard, and tossed the half of the lance still in her hand to the ground. Everyone in the training hall stared in silence. 

“Class dismissed,” the professor said. With the same dignified stride she always had, she left the hall. Dimitri watched her go until the doors swung closed. Only then did the others begin to talk among themselves. Mercedes was suddenly at his side, gentle hand on his forearm. Dimitri nearly jumped at the touch. 

“Are you injured? The professor seemed rather intense,” she inquired. He shook his head. 

“Thank you, Mercedes.” Dimitri straighted himself up and looked at the lance in his hands. “But I’m fine.”

With a smile, she pulled her hand back, and turned her gaze to the doors. “I sure do hope the professor will be alright,” she sighed. “Perhaps one of us should go check on her.”

There was an unspoken implication in her words; she was asking him to follow the professor, and make sure she was okay. Dimitri didn’t hesitate. He replaced his training lance along the wall with the rest of the wooden weapons, and left to track down the professor. 

The dorm room she occupied wasn’t too far from the training grounds, and so he sought her out there first. In his mind he imagined himself opened the door and drawing her into an embrace, holding her to soothe her pain. At her doorstep, however, he felt afraid to knock. Grief did strange things to people. He knew that better than anyone, and the professor-- no, he needed to see her are more than a teacher, just for a while--  _ Byleth _ was a stranger to strong emotion. 

Dimitri repressed any fear he felt, and knocked on her door. Byleth did not answer, so he knocked once more. He could hardly hear her voice coming from the other side. But with confirmation that she was within the room, he figured he could beg her pardon for barging in later. Her door was unlocked, and swung open with a slight creak. 

Byleth sat on her bed, a leather journal in her hands. She had been staring down at it, but looked up to Dimitri upon his intrusion. That same blank expression, the one that he found so unsettling, had returned. However, her tear stained face betrayed what she was feeling beyond her mask. He needed to say something, quickly. 

“I was worried…” he began, but then backpedaled. “If you wish to be alone, then I--”

Byleth shook her head, and spoke with a rough, quiet voice. “Can you stay?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you can't tell, I love Mercedes, and will dedicate a play-through to being gay with her one of these days. 
> 
> Follow me on twitter as I struggle to keep up with writing a one-shot every day @lowbatlaptop.


End file.
